A Woman’s Place: ‘Women in Revolt!’ at the Tate

Open­ing image Claudette John­son, ‘Unti­tled (with wool and leather)’, 1982.

Words Eloise Hal­lo

This Novem­ber marks open­ing month for the Tate Britain’s new ‘Women in Revolt!’ exhi­bi­tion, and, as I’m cer­tain I won’t be the first to tell my read­er, it’s not one to miss. The clev­er­ly curat­ed col­lec­tion spans the peri­od 1970–1990, set­ting course – if not glar­ing­ly redun­dant to note – on fem­i­nist art and activism. It would be, per­haps, eas­i­er to men­tion what the exhi­bi­tion neglects: from moth­er­hood to mis­fit hood and the mar­gin­alised, quite unlike the Frei­dan fem­i­nism of the 60’s, it has it all. How­ev­er, such expan­sive cel­e­bra­tion makes for dif­fi­cult artis­tic cat­e­goris­ing. The exhibition’s glo­ri­ous­ly wide­spread con­tent nature does not lend itself to a brief recant­i­ng. As such, I’ve tak­en it fit to look at select works through two kinds of rela­tion­ships women share and inhab­it in both the artis­tic world and the world more wide­ly, these being our rela­tion­ship with space and phys­i­cal­i­ty, and our rela­tion­ships with one another.

Fem­i­nin­i­ty and art have long been tense­ly joined, the female muse – as I have sug­gest­ed in oth­er arti­cles – was, his­tor­i­cal­ly, con­cep­tu­al­ly stag­nant. Yet, in the cen­tu­ry to which this exhi­bi­tion belongs, itch­es began mate­ri­al­is­ing around why exact­ly this need be the case. With fem­i­nism firm­ly found­ed and civ­il rights decid­ed­ly grant­ed, female activists of the mid-20^th cen­tu­ry began to query what lin­gered in the artis­tic air that kept female depic­tions from the same lev­el of dynamism as their male coun­ter­parts. Sim­ply, why it was that mas­culin­i­ty in art could rep­re­sent many things – pow­er, war, sex­u­al­i­ty, to name a few – when women rep­re­sent­ed lit­tle more than fem­i­nin­i­ty itself. The prob­lem, it turned out, was in the eye of the behold­er. Artis­tic cir­cles remained, large­ly, male-cen­tric, fig­ur­ing the female muse (despite all her mod­ern affor­dances) as some­thing still mere­ly to behold. And so, con­trary as ever – and thank­ful­ly so! – female artists tak­ing a seat at the table in the lat­ter turn of the cen­tu­ry aimed to prove their form, and that of their mus­es, was indeed not sta­t­ic or stuck, but move­able, and teem­ing with pos­si­bil­i­ties of interpretation.

This is no truer than in the works of Anne Bean, who chron­i­cles move­ment in films, per­for­mance art, and stills. In all, her female mus­es chal­lenge the idea of being observed qui­et­ly. Sim­i­lar­ly, in Han­nah O’Shea’s A Visu­al Time-Span, her mod­el per­forms in ani­mal mark­ings, cut with film from women and gay rights demon­stra­tions, adjoin­ing the idea of social move­ment with that lit­er­al move­ment of her artis­tic muse, in so doing, ask­ing that we reassess the more sin­is­ter root­ings in the his­to­ries of both. In each exam­ple, and oth­ers, as marked by the Tate, female artists of the era worked to van­quish fem­i­nin­i­ty and the female form from what the male gaze had long reduced it to. The tyran­nous auteresses of the 70’s had, by becom­ing the behold­er them­selves, destroyed the notion of being beheld: female art both for and by female artists. The mass exo­dus of such artists from appeal to male audi­ences was reit­er­at­ed by the Punks of the fol­low­ing decade, as jour­neyed in the exhibition.

Pub­li­ca­tions like Shock­ing Pink spread a dis­tinct­ly fem­i­nist mes­sage to an increas­ing­ly anti-male demo­graph­ic, which had – by the hand of ear­li­er works (like Valerie Solanas’ infa­mous SCUM Man­i­festo) – found safe-strong­holds in some denom­i­na­tions of the counter-cul­ture. Embrac­ing fem­i­nist art and activism’s new wings, how­ev­er, meant read­dress­ing their span; mak­ing room for those women who had been mar­gin­alised in the movement’s first and sec­ond waves. Artists like Claudette John­son, who ‘Women in Revolt!’ right­ly her­alds, acknowl­edged the neglect this new dynamism for white female mus­es and art imposed on those oth­er­wise oth­ered by both. Of Unti­tled,1982 (below), she notes, “I am not inter­est­ed in por­trai­ture or tra­di­tion. I’m inter­est­ed in giv­ing space to Black­women pres­ence. A pres­ence which has been dis­tort­ed, hid­den, and denied”, in so doing, beck­on­ing for this same free­dom from depic­tion as stag­nant, and reclaim­ing a resem­blant out­post to paint her own prover­bial image.

This new-found occu­pa­tion of entire­ly con­cen­tric female art invit­ed the real­i­ties of lived female expe­ri­ence to a space of art­ful­ness from which it had been pre­vi­ous­ly refused. Hav­ing medi­at­ed the fem­i­nine fig­ur­ing as some­thing new­ly capa­ble and change­able, artists moved from cel­e­brat­ing their fresh expanse to cel­e­brat­ing those express­ly female rela­tion­ships with which they shared it. Moth­er­hood and sis­ter­hood, name­ly, became top­ics of artis­tic con­ver­sa­tion, which the exhi­bi­tion spot­lights in works by Mau­reen Scott and Car­o­line Coon. 

In these pieces, and oth­ers select­ed by the Tate, the com­plex­i­ty and influ­ence of both mater­nal and soro­ral rela­tions are fore­ground­ed, echo­ing the true notion that, to no small degree, some sem­blance of fem­i­nism involves what we mean to each oth­er. The moth­er, as Coon’s sex-work­ers alike, por­tray the obvi­ous and endur­ing sen­ti­ment through­out the exhi­bi­tion that there is beau­ty in the com­radery of female expe­ri­ence and that, in the inter­ests of fem­i­nism, it mat­ters more what joins us, of which there is always ample. Such expe­ri­ence is explored down oth­er avenues also. Pen­ny Slinger satiris­es the patri­ar­chal struc­tur­ing inher­ent to mar­riage in ‘Wed­ding Cake’, and in Loraine Leeson’s poster ‘Women Beware of Man Made Med­i­cine’, she does the same of that par­tic­u­lar­ly fem­i­nine posit to be med­ical­ly ignored. Of it all, the cura­tors’ choice to sit­u­ate Birth Rites (a 49-minute home birth video) and Gina Birch’s 3‑Minute Scream such that their over­lay­ing cries fol­low you through the gallery is per­haps – or at least in my opin­ion – the most apt reminder of the strug­gles to fem­i­nine pre­dis­po­si­tion.   

‘Women in Revolt!’ is a ver­i­ta­ble anthol­o­gy of female for­ti­tude, and it makes no mis­take in declar­ing that for­ti­tude a prod­uct of demand­ing artists and activists who pushed their way into occu­py­ing artis­tic space and cel­e­brat­ing sis­ter­hood. Nar­rat­ing that nar­ra­tive, the exhi­bi­tion pro­claims ‘a woman’s place’ as pre­cise­ly any­where she pleases.

Sources Cit­ed in Order

Anne Bean ‘Heat’
https://collectordaily.com/photography-highlights-from-paris-photo-2022-part-3-of‑4/
Han­nah O’Shea
Still from ‘A Visu­al Time Span’ (A Visu­al Diary)
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/hannah-oshea-still-from-a-visual-time-span-a-visual-diary
Shock­ing Pink (1)
https://thefword.org.uk/2011/08/shocking_pink
Shock­ing Pink (2)
https://www.grassrootsfeminism.net/cms/sites/default/files/Shocking%20Pink_9.pdf
Claudette John­son, ‘Unti­tled (with wool and leather)’
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/claudette-johnsons-oxford/
Claudette John­son, ‘And I Have My Own Busi­ness In This Skin’
https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/claudette-johnson/
Mau­reen Scott ‘Moth­er and Child at Break­ing Point’ 
https://www.artrabbit.com/events/the-four-ages-of-woman
Car­o­line Coon ‘Between Parades’
https://www.stephenfriedman.com/artists/117-caroline-coon/works/20214/
Pen­ny Slinger ‘Wed­ding Cake’
https://www.richardsaltoun.com/artists/260-penny-slinger/works/18176-penny-slinger-wedding-cake-bride-shrine‑1–1973/
Loraine Lee­son, ‘Women Beware of Man Made Med­i­cine’
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8085038/women-beware-of-man-made-medicine-poster